Kristina Hoeppner: 0:05

Welcome to'Create. Share. Engage.' This is the podcast about portfolios for learning and more for educators, learning designers, and managers keen on integrating portfolios with their education and professional development practices. 'Create. Share. Engage.' is brought to you by the Mahara team at Catalyst IT. My name is Kristina Hoeppner. Today, I'm speaking with Dr Rob Lowney from Dublin City University in Ireland. DCU has become well known within the community over the last 10 years for embracing portfolio practice. First, Lisa Donaldson led the portfolio initiative, and once she stepped down, two of her colleagues, Rob Lowney and Noeleen O'Keefe, stepped in. I'm excited to talk with Rob about one of the ways that portfolios are used at DCU that we haven't really touched on much yet, that is collaborative portfolios. Welcome to the podcast, Rob. It's good to have you here.

Rob Lowney: 1:09

Thank you for having me, Kristina. It's wonderful to be on the podcast with you.

Kristina Hoeppner: 1:13

Rob, what are your responsibilities in the Teaching and Enhancement Unit at DCU?

Rob Lowney: 1:19

Oh, they are very, very wide and varied, and that's what I absolutely love about my job, is getting the opportunity to help and support the lecturers in our university to try fun and novel and innovative new ways of teaching to enhance our student learning experience. So, my unit, the Teaching Enhancement Unit, is the university centre for teaching and learning, and my role as a Senior Learning Technologist is really to try and help lecturers in our institution enhance their teaching excellence, enhance their teaching practice through the effective and the pedagogically sound incorporation of digital technologies. So I would work with colleagues like Noeleen O'Keefe and colleagues in our VLE support team, and with the head of the unit to manage the day to day operations of our learning technology ecosystem, provide staff training and upskilling, evaluate the impact, disseminate good practice, etc. No two days are the same, which is what I absolutely love about the role.

Kristina Hoeppner: 2:14

Yes, certainly a lot of different hats that you're wearing, and when Lisa was still at DCU, and I had visited once, really also having the chance to speak very briefly with you. You had run a wonderful online session,'MoodleMunch', so a number of people might recognise your voice or face from that initiative.

Rob Lowney: 2:35

That's right,'MoodleMunch' is certainly a pet project of mine. I love bringing the Moodle community together to share good practices and good case studies of how they're using Moodle and other related technologies to support learning and teaching, and that dissemination and community building and supporting one another and providing professional learning opportunities is a really rewarding part of my job. I really, really love that part of getting out there, working with the communities, you know, I'm involved in the Moodle community, DCU, and Lisa Donaldson, before me, and myself and Noeleen now are involved in the Mahara community as well, trying to advance good practice with portfolios. And that's such a rewarding part of the role, I think, is getting the chance to get out there and engage with others who have similar interests to us and really want to enhance learning and teaching through technology.

Kristina Hoeppner: 3:21

When then did your portfolio journey start, Rob?

Rob Lowney: 3:25

My own personal portfolio journey started with Mahara many, many, many years ago. I can't even remember the version of Mahara, one of the very early versions of Mahara, when I was doing my master's programme in eLearning, and when I was a student at Dublin Institute of Technology. As part of the master's programme, we were introduced to reflective practice. We were asked to reflect on our learning throughout the programme. Reflection was something that I wasn't aware of. I hadn't ever practised it before. I didn't know about it. When they introduced it to us in the programme, I was kind of like, what on earth is this? What are they asking us to do? Sure, we could just be writing down any old thing, we could just be waffling on about anything and everything, and this is what they want us to do? I don't quite understand. They introduced us to Mahara, and I did find it a bit of a struggle at the start to get used to the interface and the way of working with that very early version of Mahara. And I was just reflecting the other day, I was looking at the latest version of Mahara 26.04, and I just remembered back to my very first time using Mahara, and I just think, my goodness, how the portfolio has evolved, how more rich it has become, how more user friendly it has become, how more personable it has become, and it's just been wonderful. So I'm glad to say I've been using Mahara for lots and lots of years, first as a student, now as an administrator in DCU, running the platform, and I'd also like to say I'm a big, big fan, a big advocate for reflective practice now as well. I now understand the process of reflection isn't necessarily about producing the end product or producing the output of the reflection, but it's the process of reflection that's important, and it's almost like the output is a by-product of it. What's important is going on the journey of reflection and really thinking about what it is you've learned or experienced, and what that means for you going forward. So, I'm a big, big proponent of reflective practice now, as a result of my experiences with Mahara over the years.

Kristina Hoeppner: 5:15

Was there any particular point early on in your journey of realising, yes, reflection is actually good, and you want to continue with that because you just said it was a bit of a struggle in the beginning?

Rob Lowney: 5:28

Oh, yes, yeah, yeah.

Kristina Hoeppner: 5:29

Not just because of the technology, but really the concept of reflection. You don't really learn that in most high schools or universities, so yes, it's a new concept for many.

Rob Lowney: 5:39

For sure, and that was the most difficult part, was the whole concept of reflective practice. That was the biggest thing to get my head around. I remember one point a few years ago now, when I was submitting my application to become a Senior Certified Member of the Association for Learning Technology, the SCMALT accreditation. As part of that, I put together an ePortfolio evidencing my expertise and my experience in supporting learning technologies, and part of that was obviously included reflection and reflecting on your practice. And I just had this light bulb moment as I was working through that portfolio, where the act of reflecting really helped me to look back on my journey as a learning and teaching professional, and really helped me to zoom out and look at the big picture of all that I had achieved and all I had helped others achieve as well, and I had never really done that before. I'd never really stopped to really reflect on who I am as a professional and what I've done and how I've helped other people, but that one particular reflective exercise I undertook to complete that portfolio was really, really a big light bulb moment for me to say, oh my goodness, reflection can really help you see the wider picture, can really help you see your own impact, can really help you understand yourself a bit better. And ever since then, that was definitely a big moment for me, and realising the power of reflection.

Kristina Hoeppner: 6:56

Have you since then approached introducing reflection differently to students or in staff professional development workshops?

Rob Lowney: 7:06

Yeah, absolutely. I'll give you a very good example. So, in my role in DCU, I work very closely with my colleague, Dr Clare Gormley, the Senior Academic Developer, and together we co-teach a five-credit course for postgraduate tutors. So, these are postgraduate tutors who are taking their own first steps in teaching at university. As part of that, we introduce them to reflective practice. Clare and I were mindful of our own experiences of reflection and being a little bit cynical about it, or a bit wary about it at the start. So, what we do with our students on that course is we introduce them to reflective practice first of all and give them really good grounding of it and bring in examples of other reflections from previous iterations of the course, and we break it down and talk through what it was the students were reflecting on. We introduced them to some good models of reflection. I think providing your learners with models of reflection is really important, so they have a structure or a scaffold to get started with. We start off then by asking our students to reflect very briefly on some of their learning sessions, so when they come to workshop with us, we just ask them to reflect just very, very briefly using something simple like the Rolfe et al. model of asking 'What? So what? Now what?' those prompts. And we just ask them to reflect very briefly on the first few instances, just to get them into a habit of reflection, and really just even if they can kind of identify one small piece of learning or one small reflection, and then we build that up over time, and then by the end of the course we ask them to engage in a much more substantial holistic reflection. It's really lovely to see over the course of the course how their reflective skills have developed over time. I think that's really important to think scaffolding and kind of starting small and building people's skills in reflection and building their appreciation of reflection is really, really important.

Kristina Hoeppner: 8:49

This now sounds very much like personal reflection, everybody doing the reflection themselves and creating portfolios themselves, but what we are going to talk about today is a different side of reflective practice and portfolio work, and that centres around group portfolios because recently you did sponsor a new feature for Mahara 26.04 to support the submission of group portfolios more easily. How would you describe group portfolios, and also how do they differ from other group assignments?

Rob Lowney: 9:23

Absolutely. Firstly, it's maybe good to set the scene about why group work and group assignments and collaboration and learning through collaboration is important in the first place. At DCU, we've always prided ourselves on being a very innovative university, a very future-focused university, where we are preparing our graduates to thrive in an unscripted world, where we're preparing our graduates to go out there with the skills that they need to transform lives and societies. And we know we live in an ever-growing complex world. We know we're not alone, we need to get out there in the road, need to work together to solve the great problems of today, and doing that requires the ability to work together in teams, to work together in groups, to work together towards a common goal, to negotiate with one another, to resolve conflict with one another, to see things from other people's perspectives. These are hugely crucial skills that our students need to develop. These are skills that they can develop through group work. So, group work has always been a very, very important part of the curriculum. At DCU virtually every single programme, you know, would have a good element of group work in it. Students can't escape group work when they come to DCU. They'll be involved in several group projects, no doubt. So much so that actually we have a transversal skills framework at DCU, where we want our students to be developing a wide variety of transversal skills that they need to succeed in the world. One of the skills on that is teamwork and collaboration, which they get to practice and they get to develop through engaging in group work. So, group work has always been really, really important at DCU, and it's been really great to see some of our lecturers now really starting to embrace group portfolios because they see the benefit of portfolio learning, of that ability to create and curate a collection of digital artefacts to showcase your learning, to reflect on your learning, to demonstrate growth, to demonstrate achievement, etc. Things that are very student-centred. Portfolios can be very creative and individual. So our lecturers love those affordances of portfolio, and they also really enjoy the affordances of group work, so being able to work together, being able to build something that is greater than the sum of its parts, being able to draw on different perspectives etc. and all those affordances of group work. So I think when you combine the affordances of group work and the affordances of portfolios, you can end up with something really, really rich, really, really novel, really, really exciting for the students to engage in, and to create. I'm really excited, I think, for the lecturers to evaluate as well when the students submit it as part of their assignment. So, I think group portfolios as a whole can kind of bring together the best of both worlds.

Kristina Hoeppner: 11:59

And the functionality that DCU sponsored was really to make the group portfolio submission easier, so not the portfolio creation process because that has always been possible already in Mahara, but really the submission into your virtual learning environment, which is Moodle. Do you want to talk about how you've already used that now with the students, and whether you've already had some early feedback?

Rob Lowney: 12:27

Absolutely, absolutely. What we've identified really was that the workflow for students of working through a group portfolio wasn't as seamless as it could have been because we do have Mahara and Moodle very tightly integrated, you know, and our students log into Moodle, and then they use LTI authentication to float into Mahara, and in the vast majority of cases they submit Mahara portfolios to Moodle assignments for grading purposes. But you know, we found the kind of the workflow for group portfolios just wasn't as smooth as it could be because students would very easily work together on the group portfolio in Mahara, but when it came to submitting, they would all have to make their own individual copies and copy it to their own Mahara accounts, and then individually submit it to Moodle, and it felt like they had gone on a journey of creating a group portfolio, and now they were dividing it all up and parting ways, and you know, taking their individual copy. So it impacted the whole concept of creating a group artefact, when at the end of the day, then they were all just taking their own copies. It also then created risks of, well, what if you know they needed to make a change, but everyone had duplicated it? Does everyone go in and then make the individual change in their individual copies before they submit? That just was a little finicky for them, or very often students are working to the deadline, and they may not leave themselves enough time to duplicate the portfolio and submit it. And then there are also issues then in group management. So, obviously, there's a lot written out there around how groups can succeed, but also some of the challenges that groups face, the interpersonal dynamics and the different roles that people play. Or some people might be very active, some people might be a bit more passive. There may be a need for a lecturer to intervene and change the group membership around, and that just became extra administrative work where they would have to update the groups in Moodle and then also update the groups in Mahara if there were changes in membership. So, there was just a bit of extra administrative work that had to be done to try and facilitate group portfolios. So we really felt that we might be able to bring some enhanced functionality to Mahara to streamline that process a bit more, make it a bit easier for staff and students to work with group portfolios, so that they could just focus on that precisely, spend their time just working together on the portfolios and not have to worry about the administrative bits of duplicating and submitting and accessing and managing group members. We wanted all of that to work just seamlessly and let the students do what was important, which is working together on the group portfolio.

Kristina Hoeppner: 14:52

And you've accomplished that really well, also getting the technology out of the way and simplifying those workflows.

Rob Lowney: 15:00

Absolutely.

Kristina Hoeppner: 15:01

With the students working collaboratively, how do you manage that, along with the reflective practice? Does every student need to reflect on their own in the group, or do they also collaborate on that process?

Rob Lowney: 15:17

A bit of both. So I'll give you one example. We have one lecturer in DCU who uses group portfolios, and she teaches a leadership module. In that module, the students pick a particular social issue, and then they work together collaboratively to devise an awareness campaign or a change campaign of some kind around that particular social issue, and they would plan out their campaign and build assets for that campaign and document their work, and they would link it to leadership theory, etc. all in their group portfolio. As in some great examples, they talk to local politicians, and then they include, like, photos or videos or transcripts of them without talking to local politicians. They do have kind of flyers and, you know, marketing campaigns, etc. to make that social change, and they include that in their portfolio. So their portfolio is a lovely, I would say, showcase of their ideas for this social campaign. But then they reflect individually on it because they're also reflecting on their role in the group, and they're reflecting on their other group members, and so on and so forth. That's one approach to take, is where you have a mix of the group working together on an artefact, but then doing individual reflections. There's another lecturer then, who I know uses group portfolios, and in that particular module, students are working together on a hackathon. So they are engaging in challenge-based learning, they're taking a particular issue in their field or issue in society, they're looking at the problem, they're identifying some potential solutions, they're engaging with literature and ideas, and so on. And then they're putting together a potential solution to the challenge. So, again, they're incorporating all of that in their portfolio, they're working together as a group, but as part of the challenge-based learning framework, they're also not just documenting their approach to the solution, but they're also reflecting as a group along the way. So in that particular example, all of the group are all reflecting together on the journey of the hackathon and all incorporating it in your group portfolio. You could do it either way, and I think it just comes down to the task at hand, comes down to the assessment, comes down to the learning outcomes, etc. So you could do individual reflections alongside a group portfolio, or you could have everything bounded up as a fully group reflection, and we've seen examples of both at DCU.

Kristina Hoeppner: 17:28

When the students reflect collaboratively, does it change the nature or the value of the reflection? How do you know who is reflecting and also who's getting something out of that reflection?

Rob Lowney: 17:43

Yeah, well, I would turn it the other way around, and think that in that group scenario, it's not the individual that matters, but it's the group as a whole. So, we shouldn't even really be thinking it in terms of who is doing what in the group, or who's reflecting on what, or who's getting what out of it because the output is a group, and you're hearing the group's voice come through as a whole. Sometimes people can have a hard time getting their head around when it comes to group assessment. Is that in some cases, yes, you may want to very much identify who has done what in the assessment and break it down and give people different points or evaluate them differently, but then does that take away from the idea of the group itself being an entity in the group is an item in and of itself? So I think, you know there's lots of ways of approaching group assessment and group portfolios, but really I think it just comes back down to your learning outcomes and what is it that you want your students to achieve, and how do you want them to do that, and is it important for you to identify who is doing what in a group, or is it more important that the group engages as a whole, and the individual parts of the group are perhaps less important in some scenarios.

Kristina Hoeppner: 18:46

And I guess also trusting in the group, and because your students engage in group work so frequently, many might not really have been burned by bad experiences, where yes, you have a group of four or five, but it's only one or two people who are doing something, but that really, you have more of that equal distribution of tasks and activities, so that then they are all part of that group.

Rob Lowney: 19:11

Yes, yeah. There's lots of great things you can do to make sure group work is a success. A lot of our lecturers at DCU have a lot of experience in facilitating group work, and they would do lots of things, like being really, really clear on introducing the group task and setting out expectations. A lot of our lecturers ask our students to come up with group charters and group agreements to begin with. That example I gave you of the portfolio that one lecturer was getting their students to do around the social issue campaign, one of the very first things that they include in their portfolio was their agreed group charter that they agreed at the outset of their group journey. They included that in the portfolio. So things like that are really important. Group charters, agreements, ground rules, where to go if there is a conflict, how to try and resolve a conflict. And I think, as well, what a lot of our lecturers try to do is build in time in class for students to get together and talk about their group work and work on their portfolios together. So, in one particular class I recall, I went into the class to introduce them to Mahara, I give them an overview, and they got in their groups and they started out making their group portfolio whilst I was there on the day. That was a great way of setting the tone, and a great way of avoiding any misconceptions from day one, and that was continued then at the end of every class, the lecturer made sure to give them some time to work together on their portfolios and building in that group work as part of the class and as part of the timetable as well is another great way to make sure that group work is a success.

Kristina Hoeppner: 20:39

Awesome. Do you also have feedback from students?

Rob Lowney: 20:42

Yeah, they like it. They enjoy it. They like the ability to create something together. They like the ability to create something that's not a written project report in Microsoft Word. They like that it's something new, is something different, is something creative. They like that they have the freedom to lay it out the way they want, that they have the freedom to create and curate their own artefacts that they want to go into it. They love skins on their portfolios. They go mad for creating all sorts of lovely, colourful backgrounds and font schemes, and so on. And we love when they do that as well because you know, I always say no two portfolios end up looking the same, which is what you want. So, yeah, our students really enjoy it. It's a great way of presenting your learning and your reflections, and so on, in a really individual and a really student-centred way. So, our students like it from that point of view. What I will say, though, is I think ultimately the technology is one thing, and the support you provide students is one thing, but if the assessment task is not really designed very well, or if there's not good guidance and clarity provided to students in what you're asking them to do, I think then that can lead to a negative experience. That would happen whether you're doing portfolios or not. If you're not clear on what it is you're asking of students, they're probably going to have a negative experience.

Kristina Hoeppner: 21:56

So that is already two support measures that are in place at DCU. First, you introduce the portfolios, so you go into classes. Then the learning outcomes need to be clear. What other support measures are in place to support both students and also your faculty who might not have been using portfolios just yet to get into the practice?

Rob Lowney: 22:21

My colleague Noeleen O'Keefe, who we've mentioned already, she really takes this on board, and she does the lion's share of the work in promoting and supporting portfolios throughout university. So, I may go into two or three classes a year. I think Noeleen goes into well over a dozen classes a year to do overviews and demonstrations with students, and she does the same with lecturers as well. Our door is always open for any lecturer who wants to come and talk about portfolios, or if they want to try something new, we're there, and Noeleen is there as the lead person to provide them with that support and talk through their ideas and how portfolios might be able to support them. So we kind of do that through sort of regular communications in our all staff weekly emails, we're always promoting portfolios and inviting colleagues to come talk to us if they're interested in introducing portfolios. We run workshops and sessions for staff regularly as well, introducing them to portfolios and portfolio assessment and the benefits of portfolios and portfolio assessment. We run regular clinics, online drop-in clinics for students and staff, so if they are working with Mahara, and they've had any difficulties, they can pop in, and one of the team will be there to help them out and answer questions, and so on. And then we have a really excellent help page online, which Noleen manages, which contains like a lot of great resources around, you know, how to work with Mahara, how to work with multimedia, common issues, things to think about, how to plan and sketch out your portfolios, and also there's some wonderful exemplars on our help page as well, and I think they give lots of great inspiration to students to see what's possible with Mahara portfolios. A lot of those exemplars are actually from some of the finalists and some of the winners of our Annual Student Portfolio Awards. Every year we invite students to submit their portfolios into an awards competition, and we celebrate some of the best and the most impactful and most innovative portfolios out there, and that's always a lovely great day of celebration. Those finalists and those winning portfolios become great exemplars then for the future and to inspire the next generation of students to see what they can do with portfolios. So there's really a multi-layered approach. It's a combination of being proactive and getting out there with information and supports and encouragement, but also being on hand to be there if a lecturer has a question, if a student has a question. Our doors are always open to anyone who wants to talk about portfolios or wants some assistance or bounce around ideas with portfolios.

Kristina Hoeppner: 24:42

Do you also still have your eterns, the students helping other students in creating portfolios?

Rob Lowney: 24:48

We haven't had eterns for a while. What we're finding, actually, which is really interesting, and this is actually just arising out of a bit of research we're doing at the moment because 2026 as it happens, is our 10-year anniversary of Mahara at DCU. Lisa Donaldson, when she was at DCU, introduced Mahara 10 years ago in September 2016. It was a strategic objective in our university strategy at the time, and Lisa brought it to life. So, here we are, 10 years later, celebrating Loop Reflect, as we call it at DCU, is our brand name for Mahara, and because it's the 10 year anniversary, myself and Noeleen and our colleague Seamus (Campau) are just undertaking some research with students and staff at the moment about their experiences of using Mahara, and we've just been kind of looking at some of the emerging findings from our survey with students and also from focus groups we did with students. At this stage, one of the main places where students get support with Loop Reflect is from each other. Classmates are supporting one another, helping each other out. They're bouncing around ideas, saying, "Oh gosh, how did you embed that image there?" "Now, well, I went and I did this, or I want to get this document in. How do I do it? Oh, well, actually, if you go here and if you add the Google Apps block, you can put it in there." So we find, I suppose, there's not necessarily a need any more for us to have a team of eterns supporting the students because the students are now doing it amongst themselves anyway, naturally in their classes, which is really, really lovely to see that they're supporting one another, they're helping out one another.

Kristina Hoeppner: 26:15

Does it then also help students creating portfolios together, so that they are already naturally in the group and see what somebody else is doing and therefore have that built-in support structure?

Rob Lowney: 26:27

Absolutely, absolutely. I think you know students can be a bit reluctant. I think coming to their lecturer for help or coming to the staff member for help, so where they can get help and assistance locally from their peers, I think is much more impactful, whether they're working in a group and helping one another out, or if they're working on individual portfolios and they give each other tips or tricks, that's a really great way for sharing perspectives. It's a great form of peer learning, it's a great form of informal learning. It's really, really great to see. I think sometimes as supporters and maintainers of a learning technology, we often think everyone needs to come to us for help and everyone needs to come to us for support, but that's not the case at all, you know. I think where your users can support one another and connect with one another, that's so much more sustainable and impactful than just having us in the office trying to be providing support all the time.

Kristina Hoeppner: 27:13

Yeah, support has always been what I've seen from the outside, very important at DCU, and Lisa had edited a couple of ebooks sharing case studies. There's the wonderful DCU publication of 'The learning portfolio - A game of snakes and ladders', and you're now working on a new publication, so later in the year we can look forward to some more insights from your community. What other initiatives do you have where we can see what is happening at DCU in the portfolio space in the whole context of DCU and your innovative learning?

Rob Lowney: 27:53

Well, as I said, you know, 2026 is a very, very big year for us, celebrating 10 years of Mahara at DCU. We do hope to have a celebration event later in 2026, and it'll be a hybrid event, so there will be some people on site in DCU, but a lot will be hosted as a webinar, and people from around the world can join in to celebrate Mahara with us. At that event we hope to have the final findings from our research study that I just mentioned. We also hope to have that publication of case studies. We hope to have some staff members and some students there as well to talk about and share some of the great work that's going on with Mahara at DCU. That's going to be probably in the autumn time sometime, but even sooner than that, we ourselves and DCU are hosting Ireland's largest learning technology conference in the month of June, called EdTech, so it's the annual conference of the Irish Learning Technology Association, and the conference itself will be marking its 25th anniversary this year. So, 2026 is a year of anniversaries.

Kristina Hoeppner: 28:53

Yeah, sure is.

Rob Lowney: 28:54

It's a big year. Yes, yeah, yeah. That EdTech Conference will take place in June, and again at that, there will be some colleagues talking about their use of group work and group portfolios and portfolios in general. My colleague Noeleen will be telling the story of the work that we sponsored to develop the group submission plugin. We will also have some colleagues from Catalyst IT there who will be available to talk as well about all things Mahara and Moodle and so on. And I should say, as well, we've spoken a lot about group portfolios at DCU, and why we wanted to enhance the functionality etc. But, I think, none of that could have been possible without the wonderful partnership we have with Catalyst, and in particular the Catalyst Europe team, who we worked very, very closely with in developing this functionality. I say we developed the functionality in hindsight, Noeleen and I came up with the ideas, but you know, it was the wonderful team at Catalyst who actually made it a reality - Sam Taylor, Joey Murison, and the absolute superstar Sarah Cotton, software developer, who was just a genius when it comes to Mahara and Moodle, and I know they obviously worked very closely, Kristina, with you and your team in New Zealand as well, and that lovely partnership approach I think has really made the group submission functionality a reality. And again, at the EdTech conference, we'll be telling a little bit about that story, and I know there's a Moodle gathering in London as well in the month of June, and there'll be some more sharing of Mahara and Moodle practices. So we have a few things coming up over the next few months where we want to be talking a little bit about our work, and you know, sharing back to the community. As I said earlier, that's probably one of the most rewarding parts of my role, is getting out there and talking and engaging with others who have the same passion that I do for how digital technology can enhance education. If anyone sees me out and about, and wants to chat, I'm always up for a good chat and seeing how we can enhance learning and teaching through technology. So, there's a number of really, really great events and great opportunities coming up over the next few months, where we can share and learn from one another about our Mahara and Moodle practices, and so on.

Kristina Hoeppner: 30:57

I'll make sure to put all of these events into the episode notes so that people can see you, your team, and talk to everyone about portfolios. Where do you see the most exciting potential for the adoption of group portfolios?

Rob Lowney: 31:14

I think some of the issues that lecturers and students can encounter with group work is the different roles that students inhabit, so you know someone's a good idea person, someone's a good writer, someone's good at visuals, some people are good at organisation etc. And I think if students are sitting down and they're just writing a group text document that often excludes certain students who have certain strengths around multimedia or around imagery or around organisation etc. I think when you have a group portfolio, students who have different skills and different strengths have a greater opportunity to shine because there's just more you can do. You're not just working with text, you're working with a whole range of different digital media and digital artefacts, and you're approaching the whole thing in a different way. You're not sitting down to write a document from top to bottom, you're sitting down and you're creating a lovely page or a collection of pages that can be representative of you and your group and can be individual and can be creative. So, I think it gives more opportunity for students with different strengths and different skills to excel, and when you have different group members with these different strengths and skills, you know, really getting in and getting to apply their strengths, I think it helps create an overall much more positive group experience than, for example, if they were all just working on a text document together.

Kristina Hoeppner: 32:35

Is there anything else? Because that's already a wonderful reason for having group portfolios and also portfolios in general because you can have multimodal content and are not just confined to the writing part. Is there anything else that you wish now from your over 10-year experience of creating portfolios itself during a degree, creating a portfolio, or at least one for a professional certification, the CMALT one, and then also supporting students and lecturers at DCU? Is there anything that you wish people knew about portfolios?

Rob Lowney: 33:13

I wish people would know how fun they are. Portfolios, even if you're doing, you know, a portfolio for a high stakes assessment, it can be fun. You're working with something new and novel, you're working with something different, you're working with something that you can really put your own stamp on, make it your own. You can get into, and I know this has happened to me, circuit, where you can really get into flow state when you're working with a portfolio and just end up spending so long at it, and time quizzes by, because you're just really enjoying laying it out and embedding and curating different aspects of it. So it can be really fun. It can be really fun. It can be really rewarding. Then, at the end, when you do create a portfolio, whether it's a group portfolio or an individual portfolio, you have something that is very visibly yours and your personality is very visibly shining through it. It's hugely rewarding, and it's hugely fun as well. Portfolio assessments can be so authentic, and they can be so tied to real-world scenarios. I gave that example of a lecturer who was asking their students to document and reflect on their hackathon experience through a portfolio. You know, that's a really, really hands-on, practical type of learning, where they're really engaging with a real challenge in the world, and the portfolio was a perfect vehicle to capture that and to reflect on that. So, portfolios can be a really authentic form of assessment. They can be a really robust form of assessment as well. They're not a sort of a lesser than method of assessment, but really you can actually test and evaluate some important skills through portfolio that you mightn't be able to evaluate through other forms of assessment. We have lots of people at DCU who do know this. There are other colleagues we still need to get out there and talk to about the benefits of portfolio. There are lots of people outside of DCU and all over the world we need to keep talking to about the benefits of portfolio. I think there's huge great positives to it when we just need to keep spreading that message far and wide.

Kristina Hoeppner: 35:02

And then I find also share the examples, as long as the students are okay with that, like you do through the Annual Student Showcase and Awards, and then having the examples on your website, where you can really see how much fun the students have on their portfolios, even when they are for assessment because they are creating the skins, they are adopting them, they make them really work for them in order to let their personalities shine through.

Rob Lowney: 35:29

Absolutely, and I should say, all of our exemplar portfolios are publicly available for the whole world to see. So, if anyone would like to go to reflect.dcu.ie and if you click on the 'Help' link on the bottom of the page, you'll get to see some of our lovely exemplars that some of our students have done over the years. Please do take a look at them and show them to your students as well.

Kristina Hoeppner: 35:50

Thank you, Rob. Now over to our last three questions for you. Which words or short phrases do you use to describe portfolio work?

Rob Lowney: 36:00

Oh, I would say'student-centred' always comes to mind. I would say 'creative' because you can be very, very creative in how you create these portfolios, and I would say'fun' again. I already said fun, but I would say fun. Fun comes to mind. Student-centred, creative, and fun.

Kristina Hoeppner: 36:18

Awesome. Now you've already shared a number of tips and ideas of what people can do with portfolios, but in particular group portfolios today. Is there one final tip you would like to share for learning designers, instructional technologists, learning technologists, or instructors themselves who create portfolio activities?

Rob Lowney: 36:40

I would say the biggest thing to do is just see what's out there and ask the question of what's possible. Come talk to us, come talk to anyone else in the Mahara community. We all know the community is so friendly and open to sharing. Don't think you have to figure out a portfolio activity or a portfolio assessment on your own. There's loads of us out here who are big, big advocates of portfolios, and would only be too happy to share our advice and share our learnings for anyone who wants to get started experimenting and using portfolios. I'd say reach out, reach out if you've got questions, ideas, however harebrained they are. Reach out to someone in the community or someone who has experience of portfolios, and they'd only be too happy to share some wisdom and some tips and advice.

Kristina Hoeppner: 37:20

Since we will have a number of events where we can see you, that will be one easy way to get in touch with you, but of course also via any social media or then your university email, as well as coming to Mahara events, but also additional community events that we are having over the next few months. Now, the final question, Rob, what advice do you have for portfolio authors, whether they are students or maybe even your faculty or staff who create portfolios?

Rob Lowney: 37:52

My favourite portfolios to look at are the ones that are full of colour and full of multimedia and full of images and full of things that really let the author's personality shine. So I would always say portfolios don't necessarily need to be highly polished, and you know, using the finest of your English vernacular or anything like that. I love portfolios when the writing of the author comes through in their own personal tone, where you're seeing photographs of the author, where they're mixing their academic learning with their personal lives, where they're really bringing in colour and skins, and just really making it their own. Those are the portfolios I love. There was actually one portfolio this year, which took home one of the prizes at our Awards, and it was a really excellent portfolio of a student who was taking us on her journey of her final year research project. So we got to kind of see through the portfolio how she came up with her research question and how she wrestled with it, and she went to the theory, and then she devised her research methodology, and she went out and she got some systems putting together her survey. And there were lots of great photographs of her along the way in the lab and testing things out and photographs she was taking when she was studying. She had a lovely skin on it. The writing was just so authentic and so real. It wasn't highfalutin academic English. It was written her words and her voice, and she was inviting us into her world through her portfolio. Sprinkled throughout the portfolio then she had little mentions of how she went away on a trip with her boyfriend for the weekend to take a break from her study and all these little tidbits of her personal life were woven into it as well. It was for that reason it won one of the prizes at the Awards because the portfolio really provided a window into her academic learning, obviously, and her growth, and her reflection on her learning. That's with her as a person, we really got a sense of that in the portfolio. So, when I think of portfolios as being student-centred and creative and fun, that one always sticks out in my mind, really. And I love portfolios like that, where you can really get a sense of who the author is, and you get to know them through the portfolio. So that would be my big advice for portfolio authors, is just throw yourself in there. It's a great vehicle for showing yourself and showing your learning and for reflecting. So, make the most of it.

Kristina Hoeppner: 40:12

Thank you so much for sharing that portfolio experience that you had as a reader of it, what emotions it had invoked in you, and how you also got to know the student better by them sharing not just their academic work, but also talking about themselves.

Rob Lowney: 40:31

That'd be my big tip for portfolio authors. Absolutely. Show us who you are as you're authoring your portfolio.

Kristina Hoeppner: 40:38

Thank you very much, Rob, for this wonderful chat. I really enjoyed learning more about how you, Noeleen, and everybody else at DCU uses portfolios, with today's focus more on the group portfolio process, but of course we've also learned a bit more about how you, in general, support your learner community and what some of the plans are for the future. So I certainly look forward to having more conversations with you later in the year and then following from that. So, thank you so very much.

Rob Lowney: 41:09

Thank you, Kristina. Pleasure talking to you, as always. Thank you.

Kristina Hoeppner: 41:13

Now over to our listeners. As you think about your own portfolio work, what resonated most with you today? Share your thoughts on LinkedIn, Blue Sky, or Mastodon, and tag me or send me an email. This was 'Create. Share. Engage.' with Dr Rob Lowney. Make sure to check out the resources in the episode notes in your podcast app or at podcast.mahara.org. And if you find this valuable, share it with a colleague who'd appreciate it, too. Our next episode will air in two weeks. Until then, create, share, and engage.